Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Eleven:

Sleepiness making her dreamy and perhaps a little stupid, Fanny – as soon as she was back in her attic bedroom – changed from her aunt's splendid wedding dress and into her night things.

She was just yawning and stumbling over to the basin to wash her face and loose her hair (she was beginning to suffer a throbbing sensation at the back of her head, and should it reach the front, she knew too well it would not be quick in leaving her and she would be very likely to have it all the next day as well; so she was very eager to have the pins out and, indeed, should have had them removed sooner if she was not rendered so slow and lingering from exhaustion), when she heard a muffled commotion among the servants.

It was – a trifle alarmingly – very much possible, sometimes, from the attic, to hear them – as it was not in other parts of the house, the parts the rest of the family frequented – if they really got into a frenzy of agitation, and she vaguely wondered what the matter was.

It sounded as if they had lost somebody, and although she heard several repeated fragments of cries for "Mrs. Bertram" and desperate scuffling, searching, followed closely by "Where is Mrs. Bertram gone? We have lost Mrs. Bertram!" she did not in her present, only half awake, state realise they could mean her.

Fanny was not the sort of person who believed she could ever be important to anyone – and she was not yet accustomed to being married – so why should she suppose them to be speaking of herself?

So she was surprised beyond expression when her door rattled – somebody was trying to check her room for something which had gone missing, clearly – and she was obliged, her hair only freed from its pins on one side, to open it.

The housekeeper stood there, candle in hand, relief – and flashes of repressed annoyance – flickering across her expression as she saw Fanny before her.

"Is everything all right?" asked Fanny.

"I've found her!" called the housekeeper, over her shoulder. Then, looking to Fanny, "It never occurred to me you'd go traipsing back up here; whatever can you have meant by it, Mrs. Bertram?"

Mrs. Bertram.

Realisation dawned. Her formerly slow, sleepy mind seemed to click back into place like the gears of a clock set back to rights.

Her.

Of course they meant her.

"I beg your pardon; I did not know you were looking for me." And immediately she felt guilty – felt her cheeks heating red hot – because of course she ought to have known, ought to have worked it out when she heard them talking through the walls.

"It were a right nasty trick, upon my word," chided the housekeeper, her frown in the candlelight shadowed and uncanny. "Hiding away from us all so we'd thought you'd been lost."

Fanny blinked rapidly, recoiling a little. "I-I didn't realise I was wanted – I thought it perfectly all right to go to sleep."

Surely, as Tom's wife, if there was some household responsibility involving the servants which fell upon her shoulders – and she couldn't imagine there would be – somebody would have told her...

The housekeeper's mouth formed an O – she was stunned! "For mercy's sake, child, don't tell me you intended to sleep here."

Well, of course she did – she had slept in this room every night since she was ten years old.

"Simple, dull girl!" She shook her head. "We were all expecting you to be in Mr. Bertram's rooms, many hours since – and then Roger, after he was bringing down a tray to the kitchen, had'ta go and say he never saw you there at all – well! – but, bless me, upon my soul, you don't know the wicked fright you've given the whole staff!" It was one thing to neglect a niece of their master whose clothes had never been impressive, a charity child, but another to risk the ire of their master – or his son, more likely – by misplacing Mrs. Bertram as soon as he'd married her! "Let's get you downstairs and make sure the maid-servants have called off their search."

Not since the incident where the coachman had wanted her to exercise Tom's hunter in place of the groom had Fanny been so petrified. Her eyes lost the remainder of their glassy stupidly and she stared in pure horror. To be sure, she could not! She was certain Tom never meant for her to sleep in his rooms. Their marriage of convenience must prevent his having any desire to remove her from the attic; he only wanted her to end his curse by being under the same roof – it was enough they were in the same house, wasn't it?

She wanted very badly to insist the housekeeper ask Tom about it, but she was aware – more or less – he had never come home after leaving her in the holly-decked open carriage, the seats gone damp with snow, and he'd as good as said he intended not to be present again until breakfast, though in the dark countryside she couldn't in the least imagine where he'd go – what he could possibly be doing...

All she could manage was to insist, blithering and stuttering, imploring desperately to be listened to, Tom didn't wish her downstairs – didn't wish her to be in his rooms messing about with his belongings.

Once, years earlier, when she'd been in Mansfield for only a week, he had become cross with her for simply taking his usual seat in the billiard-room, where she'd perched, all silent curiosity, to watch Julia and Edmund play; she hadn't known it was his place, and he'd still scolded her rather fiercely, made her feel very ungrateful indeed for imposing herself where she wasn't wanted, only later in the day yielding and saying – his tone completely altered, turned less angry and more condescending, and giving her the impression Edmund had spoken to him on her behalf and brought about this change – he supposed it did no harm for her to sit there, once in a while, when he wasn't at home, if she liked.

After all, Tom had concluded, stroking his chin and considering her small, trembling ten-year-old self with a more forgiving eye, she wasn't nearly heavy enough to dent the cushion and thus inconvenience him.

But it was no good; the housekeeper would not let the matter rest, would not leave her here, would not put her own long-held position at risk for a timid, backwards, and very silly girl who didn't know what part of the house she ought to be in.

She would take Fanny and lead her downstairs.

Uncharitably, her grim mouth puckering into a pretty sulk, Fanny thought, I'll be Lady Bertram one day; she might be sorry to have treated me so, to have spoken to me thus when that day comes.

Resisting the housekeeper's tug and halting a moment on the stairs to catch her breath, she squelched the unkind thought, shaking it out of her head quite literally, as if there were a bee caught between her ears, knowing it to be needlessly vindictive.

Besides, it might be true in name, her being Lady Bertram some distant day, but she didn't believe she'd be at Mansfield Park very regularly at all then – she must be living with a retired William in a cottage somewhere, snug as anything, by the time her aunt and uncle were gone to Heaven.

"Still can't imagine what you were thinking," sniffed the housekeeper, little knowing she'd just been forgiven and took Fanny for being sullen yet. "Spending your wedding night in the attic! Bless me, I always thought you must be clever under all your habitual quietness, but I am a good deal less sure of it now – perhaps it would've been better if Sally accepted him after all. We'd never have lost her in any attic bedroom, mark me! She'd have made sure we all knew what was due her straight off."

Fanny fought back a yawn – it was brought on by continued tiredness, not disinterest, for she was very interested in spite of herself. "Did Tom want to marry Sally?" It was not a match she had ever thought of, nor – she imagined – anybody else at Mansfield; although, in thinking it quickly over, she supposed she might have guessed it from one of Edmund's comments.

He had, after all, told her Tom made offers to every sort of woman imaginable.

Still, a servant might even be a more degrading match, technically, than his present marriage to her, an indigent cousin.

It seemed odder yet, considering she was fairly certain Tom had never managed to call Sally Robins by her actual name – he usually referred to her as Sarah.

And offhandedly, at that.

Fanny had noticed her eldest cousin's habitual mistake years ago but hadn't thought it worthwhile – or her place – to routinely correct him.

"I don't know as he did want her, exactly, but he made her an offer – and that was real as corn – so she could've had him." She sucked her teeth. "Course, she'd probably have had to change her name to Sarah to oblige him." She smiled – a real, almost kind smile – at Fanny here. "Can you imagine her scribbling Sally in the registry then realising her mistake and scratching it out and – fast as anything – writing down Sarah while Mr. Bertram and a very confused priest looked on?"

Fanny had to smile back. That was rather a funny situation to imagine. And she was far, far from being even remotely jealous of Sally, or angry her husband offered his hand to a household servant before thinking of her.

Of course he had, it was only natural; he'd needed a wife and Sally was probably nicer to look at – more to Tom's taste, at any rate. She should have been a good deal more upset and concerned had Tom thought of marrying her first, given what they had always been to each other...

She wondered if there was any hope, now she was married, of making friends with the servants, since they wouldn't have any reasons left to sneer at her, save those which resented her for Mr. Crawford's sake, yet they would surely never treat her as they did the real daughters of Sir Thomas, whatever her name was changed to, but she didn't dare set her heart too firmly upon such a happy outcome.

No, indeed.

Her only real friend under this roof, she knew too well, was Edmund – and he was angry with her.

Perhaps that was unfair – Tom hadn't been unkind, despite his usual thoughtlessness, and she truly believed all the positive things she'd said in defence of him to Mr. Crawford; he was not her enemy but another protector she must now – now she had become his wife – learn to rely upon more.

Whatever Tom could not provide her with, she must learn to do without or find some way of getting it, if her need should happen to be dire, herself.

That was all.

He would surely understand, as he had not when he was younger, she was not crowding in on his possessions out of any presumption; she was being made to do it quite against her will. He would let her explain, she in turn would do her utmost to make her unfortunate position clear, and then she would not have to cope with both Bertram brothers – as well as their father – being cross with her.

"I will leave you here," the housekeeper said, ushering Fanny into Tom's sitting room. "Goodnight, Mrs. Bertram."

"The fire certainly seems to have cheered up," Fanny murmured, her voice too low for the housekeeper to really hear her, but loud enough for her cheeks to colour as she realised her mistake and considered how it would sound – if she had been heard – to be making claims of being in this room before tonight.

Indeed, though, it was a happier, brighter fire than the one Roger Smith had been working by during her last visit – and, unaccustomed as she was to having a fire on a cold night and being at liberty to spread her hands over it and sit as near as she liked, Fanny couldn't help sighing contentedly.

The door had closed, several minutes before, behind the departing housekeeper, and Fanny's front was all toasty warm so, instinctively, she turned to let it warm her back.

Her muscles relaxing, she yawned and hiked up the back of her nightdress to warm her entire backside, when – suddenly remembering where she was and immediately stricken as a result – let it fall back down over her legs again in a flustered hurry.

What if Roger Smith were to come back and see her thus? Or Tom himself by some off-chance?

Tom might have the decency to pretend he didn't see – he hadn't looked at her exposed flesh when he ripped her dress to put her on the horse that one time – but the imagined scenario, once taken root in her mind, was still too mortifying for words.

What a great shame it was to finally – finally – have a beautiful room, a lovely fire, everything so cosy, and not to feel you could make yourself truly comfortable in it!

Well, she must remember it was not hers.

Still.

Casting about desperately for a momentary distraction, Fanny's eyes lighted upon the book she'd spied left out last night. She'd been curious, then, what it was and now she could find out. There, at least, was one thing Tom never had been stingy over, at least not in any serious capacity. He had never, in her memory, unless he was teasing, making some manner of joke, denied her any book in the house – and he might, harsh as such an action would have been, for they'd be his books, every last one of them, some day – or begrudged her interest in learning. He rather seemed to think it was far better, much to be preferred, his cousin handling the musty old rectangular objects, shut up in Mansfield's library, than himself; except, perhaps, in the case where a book contained a subject of particular interest to him.

This book had weight to it, the pages were thick, and no sooner had Fanny pulled back the wide leather cover than she realised it was not the sort of book from the library, not the kind a person found poetry or facts of information in, but rather an artist's sketchbook.

It ought to have been less surprising than it was Tom sketched, that he kept a book of drawings to scribble away upon in the evenings – his sisters, Fanny knew, had always been a bit jealous of his talents there.

Julia had more cause, since her smeary watercolour landscapes looked rather dreadful compared to her brother's, and their aunt Norris was quick – despite Julia being her secondary darling – to state Tom's painting was superior, but it was actually Maria who'd regularly taken her own comparative deficiency more to heart as a child. She used to sniff and declare when she was seventeen – or eighteen, or nineteen, or whatever Tom's present age had been at the time of her wounded declaration – her watercolours would be just as good as her brother's.

They never were.

Only once had Fanny made the mistake of humbly saying she preferred Tom's painting – or, rather, she'd said she thought it impressive and had not at once said the same of her other cousins' works – and the joined sisters' scorn, Julia latching onto Maria's side of the debate as she sometimes still had been wont to when they were younger, had been swift and vicious as they reminded her she didn't know – had never wanted even to learn – about art, either music or drawing.

They weren't altogether mistaken.

It was true, as a child, she was much fonder of watching others create than attempting to create anything herself; it was humility more than indolence, a fear of being sure to make many mistakes and disappoint others when shining at an activity was less important to her than it was to them to begin with... But her aunt Norris had branded her lazy and stupid, and it was not until she was nearly fourteen Edmund, having coxed Fanny with gentle encouragement for four straight years, had his way and got her to take a charcoal in her hand.

Sometimes, when in possession of a rare hour to herself and no improving book waiting to be begun or completed, she still attempted a handful of small sketches, and she might have done it more often, despite despairing of her work being any good, if she could have burned her mistakes and avoided being chided – when she could not dispose of the evidence – for wasting so much paper without cause.

Mrs. Norris was very firm in her belief if a would-be artist did not show talent on the first stroke, the paper was ruined and not fit to have been given them when the (considerable) expense might have been spared and the same scrap made into a useful letter or list.

She never accused Julia of wasting paper, though, and she was only marginally better than Fanny due to having the advantage of Miss Lee's lessons from an earlier age than her cousin.

Fanny wondered how it would feel to be Tom and to never be told you weren't good enough for the paper you used, no matter much of it you accumulated and crumpled.

In her own personal case, she was not resentful, for she believed it to be true enough, but still she wondered – she couldn't help it.

She ultimately dismissed the melancholy thought as mawkish, considering, as she eventually must, how she might have bought her own paper for drawing – if it was ever that important to her – with the money she saved for books and for the few odd objects and baubles and such like in the East room that hadn't been direct gifts from her cousins. One couldn't expect to have everything; it would be a greedy kind of entitlement indeed. She'd chosen her poetry and to have Edmund help her line most of her spare paper for letters and notes.

She could have left more blank.

That was that, then.

So, what had Tom drawn?

Fanny walked a few steps nearer the fire with the open sketchbook in her arms to see it better.

The first sketch was of a cosy spot, a tree and a little stone bench, she had seen when walking in the village. It was easily recognisable. She must have seen that place a thousand times over and never thought of it unless she happened to be short on breath and sat for a few moments upon the bench with her eyes closed until she was well enough to get up and walk again; she'd never thought about Tom walking or stopping there.

Strange to think he had thoughts all on his own he didn't feel the need to share with the whole house after he had them.

She'd never thought of her eldest cousin – her husband, she must remember what he was to her and be more reconciled to it – as being particularly reflective, but there was a prevailing gentle pensiveness in his drawing which showed him capable of such quiet feelings after all.

What had inspired him to sketch something so simple as an empty bench on the side of a path?

The next sketch was not of anywhere she had seen.

It was a beautiful flower poking through the soil, shaded in between the lines to represent it as possessive of some dark colour – exotic, not the kind they had here in England – half sun-scorched, petals wilted on one side while perfect and vibrant on the other.

In his fine, flowing – almost girlish – handwriting, Tom had titled this one: Dying Hibiscus.

Turning over the page, Fanny discovered the sketch on the next leaf had a title as well.

Our Neighbours.

They were a couple, a man and a woman, their skin shaded by Tom's charcoal– like the flower – to show they were dark rather than fair.

Fanny wondered if they were slaves or else free natives.

If they lived near enough to Sir Thomas' plantation to be called neighbours, they were more likely the former.

Neither the man nor his – wife? – wore anything covering their upper bodies. Both the man's strong upper muscles and the woman's breasts were shown.

Her cheeks heating, Fanny might have turned the page again for fear she might be looking at something bordering on immodest. But she was curious as to why the woman seemed to have only one nipple. Was she deformed, poor thing? Had Tom simply forgotten to draw the nipple on one breast? No, there was a shape there... A sort of round shape...

She squinted in the firelight and realised, oddly satisfied to make the connection, there was a third in the sketch – the woman was nursing a little baby.

The baby's head hadn't been shaded as dark, and Fanny couldn't help supposing Tom might have done that to suggest it was a mulatto.

For a moment, she was puzzled, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow.

Two people as dark as Tom had drawn the couple probably wouldn't make a mulatto baby – such a child was usually the result of...

"Oh," she whispered, and closed the sketchbook.

Perhaps she oughtn't have looked; she felt as if she had been reading Tom's private journal from his time in Antigua, and it wasn't any of her business. If he thought more on slavery and its corruption than he let on, if his mind on the subject was more nuanced than his blasé manner suggested, it wasn't her place to pry. If he wanted anyone to know what he thought, he'd tell them. He was good at that. She might be reading too much into it, anyway. It could just as simply be he thought the couple and their baby who was obviously not both of theirs made an ascetically appealing picture; and he wasn't wrong, for they certainly did; they were a handsome family in exactly the opposite way of the more flaxen Wards and Prices and of the milky-complexioned Bertrams.

Too tired to think on the subject any further, Fanny resolved to return the sketchbook to where she'd found it and to make herself comfortable on the rug by the fire.

She wasn't going to go through the door to Tom's bedroom as if she thought she had a right to – even if the thought of a feather bed with draperies just now was nothing shy of heavenly.

(She did, however, dare to take one of the fringed pillows she found at the far end of the sitting room and put it under her neck.)

Tomorrow, Tom must speak to the housekeeper and have her moved back to the attic, out of his way.

All would be set right.

She might be sleeping here for only the one night, and the rug was more than two inches thick as well as very soft, and the fire still crackling away in the grate was so deliciously warm it made her cheek nearest it feel like a pence coin left on a stove...

She was awakened in the morning, prodded by the ash-smeared toe of Roger Smith's boot as it lightly nudged somewhere near her left temple.

"Oh," he said when she opened her eyes. "You're alive, then."

It was impossible to work out if this fact pleased or displeased him, the valet's face was so lacking any discernable emotion.

Her eyes were bleary, and she rubbed at them as she sat up.

"Far be it for me to tell the future Lady Bertram what to do, lest she lecture me for impropriety again, but I was, on discovering you here, nevertheless wondering if her future Ladyship was aware of the existence of beds?" Here his mouth betrayed a trace of humour. "I'm told they're more comfortable than the floor."

Fanny stood up and handed him her pillow. "I thank you," she managed, "for your kind concern, but I do not think I will be living in Mr. Bertram's rooms long enough for it to matter."

"Excuse me, Mrs. Bertram." And he held up a finger and stepped behind a screen.

Not a full second later, she could hear him laughing so hard the screen shook. His screeching could probably peel the paint straight from it. She was uncertain whether this was better or worse than his previous practice of laughing directly in her face.

When he stepped back into sight, Mr. Smith was wiping tears from his eyes.

Living as Tom's wife, regardless of what room she slept in, wouldn't be so bad – especially as he seemed so keen on making himself scarce, so that she would hardly ever have to see him – but Fanny was growing less and less fond of the idea of being shackled to Roger Smith until the day she could move into a cottage with William.

Apart from the presence of a very pretty sugar-glazed cake, there seemed to be no great difference between this Wedding Breakfast and any other breakfast Fanny had ever had in the breakfast-room at Mansfield before.

The room was decorated, and looked still looked extremely fine, but only because the usual Christmas greenery had not yet been removed or taken down.

The only guest – apart from a scowling Mrs. Norris, who did not really count as a guest – was Mr. Yates, and she was more than a little surprised to see him, having supposed he and Tom's Eton friend had been left behind at the parish church. Perhaps he had been in the guest-room last night – it seemed the only place near enough for him to be present at this hour; Tom must have arranged it, for the only friend decent enough to attend his wedding, whatever his father thought of young man's actual merits.

Tom – masked as always – swanned in a few minutes after Fanny sat down and was poured some chocolate and handed some newspaper or other his father had already finished with.

Mrs. Norris grumbled about how in her day a gentleman did not unceremoniously plop himself in the seat beside his wife at the Wedding Breakfast like a vulgar sailor and, scandalized by this gross breach of etiquette, insisted on being served another slice of cake.

Nothing else, she declared, would do more to ease her fragile and gravely shaken nerves.

Sir Thomas, for all he was still cross with Fanny (he was not even looking at Tom, his cutting most decided and pointed, to show his displeasure), was quick to suggest she wait on the bride's having had at least one slice herself before asking for seconds.

It was a good cake, though Fanny found it overly sweet for the first few bites, and thought it rather stuck to her tongue like an adhesive.

When the meal was finished, she thought she might have a chance to ask Tom about telling the housekeeper to let her return to her own room, but instead he – and Edmund, as well – disappeared with Sir Thomas into his study where they remained a while with the door locked.

There evidently was some quarrel between them, because Edmund left the house in a hurry when the study door opened again, uncharacteristically Friday-faced – he did come and bid Fanny farewell, once he had his coat and top hat on, taking her hand in the foyer and saying he hoped, despite everything, they could part as the friends they'd always been, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere and he took her warmth and acceptance of his extended olive branch for granted.

She tried, of course, to ask where he was going.

His answer was short, almost curt. "I return to Peterborough on business."

Fanny wondered, since he'd missed his ordination, what business could bring him back there – presumably to Lessingby and the Owens again – at this time, but although he realised she wished to know he did not tell her.

Tom – who might have told her, if she could have got him alone to ask – was gone the rest of the day, never seeking her out, and she spent most of the afternoon which followed in the drawing-room with her aunts and Mr. Yates, who – until Sir Thomas stuck his head in and made a very strong hint the Honourable was overstaying his welcome – was the only truly cheerful soul Fanny spoke to all day.

John Yates certainly seemed to be the only one remotely pleased Fanny and Tom had wed the day before; his rather hilarious ignorance of its not being a love match seemed to put him in a state of perfectly amiable bliss and he wished her happiness with a very good will.

Tom did not return that night, either, obliging her to spend the evening alone once again in his sitting room, this time sleeping in one of the chairs by the fire with a blanket wrapped around her.

There was, then, nothing else for it but to – despite any embarrassment caused by speaking before the others – simply ask Tom at breakfast, Fanny decided, about talking to the housekeeper.

But the next morning, curiously, he did not turn up for breakfast at all.

She tried to ask where he was, but neither of her aunts knew, and Mrs. Norris apparently took it as a great personal slight that she would dare expect her to know where Tom had gone.

"I always knew where my dear Mr. Norris was, God rest his soul, each moment of every day, right until the hour he died," she told her niece disapprovingly. "No proper wife does not know her own husband's schedule." She gave this condemning little speech with the same brisk, unfriendly tone she would have used when chiding her for losing a stocking or reticule.

(The same tone she had used to tell her off for losing the poor basket, in fact.)

Prefer him to Fanny, she might yet, as she would prefer any of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram's children to the Prices, but it seemed almost as if Tom's marrying beneath him had changed him in this formerly favouring aunt's estimation, transformed him from a beloved nephew to little more than a precious but inanimate object fallen into the possession of less than worthy hands.

Fanny was not sorry for herself on account of being thus scolded but she was instead deeply sorry for poor Mr. Norris – it must have been dreadful for him, when he was alive, if her aunt spoke the truth, to have no moment of time which was his own, unhindered by his wife's foreknowledge of where he was and what he would be doing.

Even she had, on occasion, gotten to take an impromptu walk in the shrubbery her aunt didn't immediately know about or to go riding with Edmund at some unplanned hour.

Although she was expecting another night alone, much like the previous two, Tom came in just as she was warming her hands over the fire and vaguely pondering whether she would rest on the floor or in the chair again when sleepiness overtook her.

"Hullo, Fanny," he said brightly, striding to her and putting his own hands over the fire as well, rubbing them together. "Wonderfully dashed cold night, isn't it?"

"I'm sorry," she blurted, turning to face him hurriedly. "I am sure you did not want me here, only the housekeeper–"

"Not want you here?" Tom echoed, confused, tilting his head at her. "Whatever are you talking about?"

She attempted to explain, threading her fingers together to steady her hands and stumbling over her words, how she'd been taken from the attic room the night after the wedding and told she must live in his rooms and none of the servants would believe her when she tried to tell them Tom wouldn't wish the change to be enforced.

"I've slept here by the fire," she told him, hoping he couldn't see the guilt in her expression for having peered into his sketchbook. "I haven't disturbed your things or your bed."

"Fanny!" he laughed, incredulous. "D'you mean to tell me you've been sleeping in the sitting room for two nights, when there's a perfectly good bed right through that door?" He motioned to his bedroom with a flick of his wrist before putting his hands on his hips. "Good heavens! And here I imagined Smith was joking when he told me he found you asleep on the floor!"

"But I–" She looked down, cheeks pink. "I cannot understand it. Doesn't living in the same house with you for seven years end your curse? Surely it wouldn't matter if I stayed in the attic?"

Tom took a staggering step back and regarded her afresh. "Can you have misunderstood? When I said you had to live with me for seven years, of course I meant you would move in here. I couldn't tell you why – it never made anything like sense to me – but the curse requires we live in the same room and sleep in the same bed. My absence the first two nights after our wedding was unavoidable, but in future, I shall be here with you more or less every evening.

"You see, Fanny, every night we're not together is one day more of the seven years, as I understand it, and I wish to remain cursed for as short a duration as possible...

"Oh, hang it all, you must have understood me from the first – I can't imagine you did not! You're a bright little mouse, so surely you surmised something of this! If not, for what cause did you imagine my father to be so inflexibly set upon having me married off by Christmas? Not merely to punish me, though I'm certain he'd not have lost any sleep if I did suffer. He wants an end put to this."

Her cheeks went from dark pink to chalky white as she blanched. "I don't...? You're not saying I'm required to...?" The words she couldn't get out of her throat fairly choked her. "I-I'm sure I don't mean to shirk what is expected of me, if that..." Her poor heart hammered; she was quite terrified. "Only, I was not expecting – and I don't know how to–"

Behind the slits of the mask, his eyes softened. "Merciful God, no! Fanny! Nothing of the sort." He reached out and grasped her shoulders. "I assure you it's perfectly innocent. You on your side of the bed, I on my mine." For a moment he paused, then added, "I don't envy you the first couple of nights, of course, as Smith and Edmund have both informed me I talk – and count – in my sleep, but I'm sure with time you'll become accustomed to it." Giving her a teasing grin, he sighed, "I daresay women get accustomed to a great deal of trouble from their husbands far worse than any inconvenience I might inflict. Why, in seven years, you might be so used to my nightly prittle prattle you shall find it difficult to sleep without it."

She exhaled, greatly relieved, but she must still have appeared a trifle wary, for Tom (after gauging her expression) released her arms and took her hand, pulling her away from the fireplace. "Come, recollect we are friends. Let us see what we can do to ease your mind."

Afterwards, looking back, Fanny thought it was the sweetest thing a husband ever did to reassure his shy wife – Tom single-handedly transformed what would have been an anxious, awkward night, into a kind of game to distract her from the oddity of the whole situation.

It was as if they were children again.

Tom moved furniture around to create a makeshift fort, hung over with blankets, linens and pillows – and once it was set up and Fanny was snugly inside, admiring his handiwork, he rung for Smith to bring them biscuits and chocolate.

After the bell pull had been yanked so many times in quick succession it was a wonder it wasn't broken in the process, Smith appeared, looking vaguely annoyed, but he brought the treats Tom asked for without comment and fetched a deck of cards at his master's request as well, so that Fanny and Tom could begin what subsequently became several hands of piquet.

The (not inconsiderable amount of) noise Tom made dragging the furnishings apparently caught the notice of his father downstairs, who – wondering what in blazes the young couple were doing up there – sent Baddeley to investigate.

The butler was understandably hesitant to disturb them, but as Sir Thomas insisted the obvious answer – the one which would cause an interrupter such hesitation – to what the ensuing ruckus was to be quite impossible in their particular case, he was persuaded to follow orders and – finding Tom's sitting room door unlatched – pop in and discover was happening.

"They have erected some manner of tent, sir," he reported back, one corner of his mouth quirked in amusement. "Mr. and Mrs. Bertram appear to be eating and playing card games inside."

Sir Thomas smiled in spite of himself. "Eight years ago, I should have been very glad to hear of it, I think – though perhaps not at this ungodly hour." He sighed and settled down to order some papers he'd not yet properly arranged on his desk. "Rather ironic, is it not?"

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